Since we're telling turkey stories, I thought I would put one up out of my journal from a few years ago. A buddy of mine was hunting straight across the valley from this bird and had nicknamed him "Loudmouth." He said he was gobbling his head off every morning over there and I needed to come take care of him because he was sick of listening to him every morning.


Went back after them this morning. To make a long story short...there wasn't a turkey gobbling in my zip code it seemed. At 8:00 I was planning on just going on into work and was almost back to the van walking across a bridge and a turkey gobbled on the mountain straight behind me. I stopped, turned around, and listened to see if it was a one-timer or if he was gonna get wound up. He gobbled 4 or 5 more times in the next minute so I said piss on work. Went way around past him and climbed up to the level he was on. He was strutting back and forth and gobbling around this pretty bench and I just could not risk crossing a big hollow that I wanted to cross to get a little closer. So, I just backed up a little bit so that if he crossed that hollow he would pop up inside of 50 yards. I sat down at 8:15 and yelped and cut and him and he gobbled about 4 times straight....sounding good so far. I waited about 20 minutes and he just kept walking that little racetrack over there getting a little closer and then a little further. I called again and the exact same scenario. Exact same thing about 20 minutes later again. I figured I had about an hour at most to deal with him and decided to play a little chess match with him. When he got as far away from me as he had been going and I was pretty confident he wouldn't see me in the open woods, I got up and slipped straight away from him about 75 yards and was gonna go up about 3 benches, cross the big hollow, and try to slip down on top of him. But, before I did that...I was just gonna try the ol "I'm leaving" trick on him. I started up through the rocks, purring, clucking, and scratching as I went and he gobbled again and it sounded like he was little closer than he had been thus far. I found a big ash tree to hide behind/lean against behind some rocks where very little of me would be showing and I yelped and cut at him again and he gobbled about 4 straight times again and was definitely in that big hollow now...not far from where I first started working him. I just shut up from then on and only scratched around in the leaves a couple of times down behind those rocks and then went totally silent. It wasn't just a minute til I started hearing faint drumming and then he gobbled straight below me at what sounded like about 80 yards away. I kinda got caught in a place where I could see down to him a little more than I would have liked (knowing that he would be able to see where I had called from too), but I thought I would be OK with all those rocks and such which could easily hide a hen. After that last gobble I almost immediately started seeing him strutting down there and zig-zagging toward me. He was drumming like crazy and prolly gobbled on his own 10 more times as he made his way to me. At about 55 or 60 yards, and after craning his neck several times looking for that hen up in the rocks....he decided that everything was OK, dropped out of strut, and started walking/angling right to me. He walked behind a huge white oak and a pile of rocks and I eased my gun up and busted that noggin at 9:55 when he stepped out from behind those rocks at 38 steps with the 3.5" mag blends. He put on a heck of a show coming through those wide open hardwoods and had me wound up!!!!!!! Man, I freakin love this stuff!!!!

1" wore down spurs
9.5" paint brush beard
18 lb.